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Monthly Archives: July 2010

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Do you know what has always been so depressing to me? Abandoned blogs. Like you google “knitting needles” and come across a cute little website with nice pictures and funny anecdotes and instructions on knitting and perling or whatever, and then you realize that you’re reading something from October 2007. So someone took all that time to put their intense feelings about knitting on the internets, and then life took over, and evidence of their complete lack of follow-through is just sitting out there, waiting for google to point it out and the whole world to see.

Mamaesq was dangerously close to becoming a depressing abandoned blog. I haven’t even logged on since April, back when I lived in the city and didn’t have a commute or two sinks in my bathroom (my bathroom is bigger than a closet now!). But now that we’ve unpacked a little bit, and gotten used to mini-vans and commuting etiquette and not getting mugged (kidding) (a little), I have time to try to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life. Which is where this blog comes in. Because, really, I have no freaking clue what I’m doing, but writing here feels like I’m doing something semi-productive. Even if my only audience is my mom. Hi mom.

So many of my peers — sadly, mostly lawyers — have told me they feel stuck in their jobs. In their lawyer-ly way they’re quick to note that they feel lucky to have a job at all, and very lucky to have a nice paycheck, but just feel totally uninspired and unsatisfied with their career. I don’t think I’m alone in that. And most of my peers say that doing something, anything, that makes them feel like they have options helps them deal. Like I have a friend who is constantly updating her resume, but has zero intention of actually looking for another job right now because of financial constraints. But just knowing that one more call from an a-hole supervisor and she could unleash her perfectly edited resume on the world makes her feel better.

I thought dropping back to part-time and moving to the ‘burbs might change that feeling a bit for me. But no luck. So today I’m blogging about nothing in particular, and tomorrow night I’m starting a writing class. I’m excited and totally intimidated, mainly because the class apparently involves a lot of reading, which I can only do for like 10 minutes at a stretch before passing out cold, and because I haven’t written fiction since law school. And I’m secretly afraid that law school destroyed the creative writing part of my brain and replaced it with bluebooking rules and latin phrases. So we’ll see how it goes. But it feels nice to be doing something a little creative again that’s not about the kids, and is just for me. It’s been a while.

Also, living in the ‘burbs kind of rocks so far. The transition was really no big deal. So far the hardest part has been getting used to not locking the doors and not setting the house alarm every time I’m inside. That, and figuring out which of the four thousand kid-friendly activities and restaurants we want to go to on the weekend. Pretty good. Oh, and getting used to suburban drivers. I think when you drive in the city, there’s an aggression level that everyone has, and it all works beautifully – you just assume the dude next to you wants your parking spot and is going to blow past you and screw you out of getting through the next light, so you just respond accordingly. But where we live now, people seem to be TIMID and FRIENDLY when they drive. IT IS BIZARRE. It’s like people aren’t in an insane hurry and aren’t trying to screw you out of a primo parking spot. And honestly, it bugs the crap out of me. Clearly my issue. I’m sure it’s a matter of time before I’m driving slowly and smiling and wondering why some lady with DC plates is giving me the finger.